The Unromantic Romantic

(image courtesy of ExCom on deviantart.com)

I always tell people that I’m not romantic, not because I don’t believe in love or want to fall in love but because I, for some reason am caught up in the belief that I’ll never experience the incandescent bliss I’ve read about in Jane Austen novels. It’s true that real life pales in comparison to the imagination. Every self proclaimed ‘romantic’ I know has a checklist of qualities that the potential love of their lives will possess. I guess that the time and energy they spend daydreaming about and planning for their future lover makes them romantic, but to me that checklist turns love into a science, something I believe to not only be impossible but unromantic. The truth about love isn’t that you’ll fall in love with someone that fits your checklist, it’s something completely different, you can’t quantify and narrow down the exact qualities you’ll find in a person that will spontaneously create love. The best thing about love is that it’s not logical, and no matter how much you think you know what you want in a mate, the heart has a different agenda. Maybe I am a romantic, not in the classical sense of course (when have you ever known me to be conventional?); I am resigned to believe that one day, if it’s meant to be I will find love, but I’ve decided that I can’t plan my life around it, and I realize that I can’t plan it either.

That's all she wrote...For Now